There was no other choice, he reminded himself. Safi and Chris needed his help, and that was going to mean suiting up. Bes had done as good a job patching him up as Tony could possibly expect from a cheerful midwife trapped in a land of 18th century technology, there was really no substitute for modern medical technology. Especially with many of Extremis's more useful features, including his healing factor, offline.

Still. He was already rolling his eyes in preparation of the sneering lecture he knew he was walking (well, crutching) into. He'd let already let Justin know he was coming. It was just a matter of biting the bullet and dealing with him.

He raised his hand to the buzzer of Justin's practice, because of course Justin was too good for any Avengers headquarters, and pressed it. "Justin? I'm here. Let's get this over with."

Well, he supposed that it was inevitable. As usual, Mr. Doctor Of Everything Except Medicine was hurt, and he was finally doing what he should have done in the first place: Come to see someone who was actually qualified to patch him up. There was a certain satisfaction in that, of course, in being able to do the one thing that Mr. Perfect I-Think-I-Own-The-Avengers Stark couldn’t. How could there not? Of course, he’d been hurt while saving Steve and the other Tony with Justin, and had taken hits that otherwise would have been aimed at Justin. Moreover, Justin had been his partner for that little excursion, so could you really be smug about someone coming to be patched up for things you hadn’t been able to prevent?

He could practically hear people saying that Tony should have held out for Thor or Steve to be his backup.

Justin walked down into the small waiting room of the clinic, spotting Tony immediately. “Oh, you’re welcome for clearing my schedule and seeing you at a moment’s notice, Tony,” he said, smirking a little… but honestly, his heart wasn’t in it. He jerked his head toward the door he’d just come through, turning around toward it. “Come on. Let’s see how much damage you’ve been holding off on getting fixed. The fact that it was a soul stone that could make things that pack that much damage is just about as screwed up as you can get.”
@starkly

It wasn't like Tony was expecting anything other than sarcasm. But Justin's description of the damage he thought he was dealing with made Tony blink. Sure, he'd come away from that fight with some bruises some bruises and a couple of friends cracked ribs, but it wasn't like he'd ever go to Justin for that. It had hurt, sure, but then he'd been drunk and getting sober and then he'd fallen into Bes's world and the ribs had been the least of his worries.

He gestured at the crutches he'd left leaning on the wall beside his seat. "Not why I'm here," he said curtly. "Fell into an another universe--literally--and broke my leg. No technology beyond the 18th century, so, got patched up by a very pleasant minor home god-cum-midwife, but could use a quick exam by someone who was actually trained in medicine in this century." He smiled at the part Justin would probably hate. "Anyway, I need to suit up to rescue a friend so I'll take whatever gets me back on my feet. Literally."

He picked up the crutches and hopped toward Justin and the door. "So. Let's do this. I don't have all day."

"Not why you're..." Justin gaped for a minute. The hits Tony had taken hadn't been anything to laugh at. Hell, at the time, Justin had worried that he'd have to drag the guy out of there. On the other hand... He mentally tallied up the time, then shook his head. "Damn, it has been a while, hasn't it." All right, so Tony hadn't been hurt that badly, which he supposed was good, but which weirdly put him off a little.

Justin listened to Tony's explanation of what happened in about as much stride as you could expect from someone who now lived in the Hub. Falling into another universe? Hell, it could happen to anyone here on any given day. Justin winced at the description though. Even he wouldn't want to get stuck in the relative dark ages like that, and he wasn't the one who (allegedly) needed two particle accelerators and a solar converter to be sexually active.

The demand for speed, however, made Justin stop, and it was probably hillariously obvious that the doctor's normal irritation at someone not following specific medical orders was warring with the Avenger's instinct that when someone was in trouble, you did whatever you damn well had to to get back in the game and settle the matter. Finally, Justin scowled and gestured Tony into a room. "Fine, fine. If I don't get you ready, you'll probably use some half-baked body-hack to do it anyway and probably sterilize yourself in the process. And no, don't ask me why I'm trying to prevent that. Lay on the table, let me get a scan of you."
@starkly

Only Justin could seem irritated that he hadn't been flattened in their fight at the Tower. Much harder to put on the supercilious act about how Tony couldn't handle himself when he'd walked away fine. More or less. Extremis had taken care of the worst of the damage, anyway. "Yeah," he agreed shortly, suppressing the urge to remind Justin just how desperate he had to be to come to him for anything.

"It wasn't so bad," Tony said, because the last thing he wanted from Justin, ever, was his pity. "I built a hot air balloon. Met the mayor. One of the better vacations I've had." It was probably telling that the flippant statement wasn't entirely untrue.

He watched the emotions warring on Justin's face as he described his dilemma. But for all his faults, at the end of the day Justin was an Avenger, and Tony had known he'd come through.

Didn't stop him from rolling his eyes at the sterilization jab. "I'm so glad you care." He hopped over to the table, wincing slightly as he swung his legs up. "I won't be able to wear the regular splint under the armor," he explained more seriously. "And I'm going to need to use my boot repulsors for flight, of course, and I'd prefer not to re-fracture it from the stress alone. It was, ah, bad." He paused, an uncomfortable expression crossing his face at the memory of seeing the bone protruding obscenely from the skin. "So whatever you've got, I'll take."

Justin couldn’t help smirking a little bit. The various collection of items on Tony’s list just came together funny in his head. “Then did you melt the wish after being inducted into the Lollipop Guild?” he asked, chuckling as he locked the exam room door. Sure, Justin might roll his eyes at Tony’s issues with letting anyone get a look at his biology, but he wasn’t going to go making it easy for it to be anyone other than him who saw it. Then, his scanner ready, he passed it through the air over Tony, calling up a holo-display of the scan results.

“I guess that’s the problem with our line of work,” he mused, only slightly distracted, as he began examining cutaways of Tony’s leg, searching muscle tissue for injuries that needed to be repaired, bone sections that were fusing out of place, anything that registered as bad. “It takes falling through a universe where we can’t get any work calls before we can let go of things guilt free.” Granted, what Tony had here to keep him busy and make the Hub not a vacation for him was something Justin hadn’t exactly kept up with. Maybe he should ask… or maybe he shouldn’t give Tony the satisfaction of knowing that things on his radar still carried the weight of importance. Yeah, that was the safe bet. For now. Besides, he could always ask Wanda another time.

“Of course I care,” Justin said, a hint of indignation cutting through the distracted tone he always adopted when he was absorbed in a medical issue. Ever since the incident at the Tower and the encounter with the Soul Gem (Stone. The ones from that universe were just stones, and were crazy powerful. He had to remember that…), he’d tried to force himself to be honest to at least himself. And that was the really, really irritating rub of it: If he didn’t give a shit about Tony, if he hadn’t ever considered him a friend, the guy’s betrayals wouldn’t have hurt.

“Well, you did a good job breaking it,” Justin admitted, finally, looking at a display of the bones in question, frowning in concentration. “Not as much as I would’ve expected for an uncontrolled free fall, though, so you’re still winning the battle on who makes the best armor. We’ve got a few options here, but the big factor is going to be how long we have to let it work. I’m guessing two days is out of the question?” He glanced up long enough to get that confirmed, then scowled a little. “Yeah, didn’t think so. This is why I hate quick fixes, they’re lousy for keeping things in good shape. All right, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to have to dissolve all of the new calcium bonds in your bones, which will hurt, but it’ll let me set everything back in the right place to re-seal it. If you can let the cellular regeneration work until morning, it’ll be at… I’d say fifty percent?” He made a face at the guestimate. Even if it was a conservative guess (which it was), it was much less healed than he would be happy with. “I have some forcefield tech designed for a splint that could make up for the rest, I’m just going to assume that you can integrate it into your armor and save us questions we both know the answer to.”
@starkly

Tony smirked back at the Wizard of Oz comment. "Yeah. And for some reason an old man behind a curtain kept trying to give me a heart." It hadn't occurred to him as he's said it, but yeah, hot air balloons and mayors...it was funny.

He couldn't remember the last time he and Justin had shared a moment of humor like that. Before Registration, certainly. It made him ache, in a distant sort of way, for the old days when they'd all sit around the lounge in the Mansion after a hard mission and trade stories and jokes. They'd been friends before Registration. He'd had a lot of friends before Registration.

He nodded slightly as Justin locked the door, but frowned as Justin ran his scanner over his leg. If Extremis had been functional, he could have tapped in easily and seen what was going on, but as it was he had no choice but to wait impatiently for Justin's verdict. "Yeah. Something like that," he added vaguely in response to Justin's musing. It had been nice to get away from the mess he'd made in the Hub, but in the end, he was as responsible for that as he was for the mess he'd left back home. Then after a short moment he volunteered, "I'd been drinking again. I stopped." It wasn't like Justin was likely to care, but he'd looked curious and Tony had never been shy about that particular problem.

Two days was MUCH too long. Truth be told, so was one. Still, Tony nodded though Justin's explanation. Rebreak his leg, fine, cellular regeneration, forcefield splint, fine. That last part wouldn't take long, since the armor already incorporated enough similar tech it was more a matter of tweaking than adding.

"Yep, sure, that's fine," he said impatiently. "Except, ah, I'm leaving today." Chris was going to have everything ready in hours, and there was no telling what difference a day could make if Safi was hurt and trapped somewhere. "So, do what you can do in a few hours and I'll take care of the rest."

He didn't expect Justin to be happy about it. But he was leaving either way and Justin had known him long enough it shouldn't come as a surprise.

And Tony had been drinking again. There were a few things that any Avenger watched out for, not in a ‘the world is ending’ sense, but in a ‘we have some self-destructive teammates’ sense. Wanda, Hank, Carol, Tony, all of them had their issues that the others watched and kept an eye on, even if no one ever said anything. This, though? This was one he hadn’t seen coming. Tony might always find a new self-destructive thing to fall into, but he usually kept a good lid on the ones that he’d beaten. Hell, when Wanda had gone crazy and sabotaged Tony in front of the UN, Justin had berated Clint for having his doubts about whether or not Tony was still keeping away from the bottle. Justin was the first one to say that Tony was far from perfect, but he found this odd faith in the man’s ability to keep away from booze. “Just… be careful,” he said. He didn’t want to get into a big lecture, because Tony knew all of them already. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have stopped drinking again. “It’s always harder to stay away after a relapse, so… if you need anything…”

He cut himself off, not wanting to finish the sentence, not wanting to have some weird ‘moment’ with Tony over this any more than he thought Tony wanted to have one. The point was there, this way they could just pretend it hadn’t been said and move on like men.

“Today?” The disapproval was obvious in Justin’s voice, but there wasn’t anything to do about it. “Well that changes things. Shit. All right…” He frowned, looking at the readings, then nodded. “All right, I have something that might help with that, then. I guess we can’t take our time with this.” And, of course, after stating his dislike of the tech, he hated using the nanites Shuri had provided so easily, but it was going to speed the process up considerably. He was positive that they weren’t her best version of the tech, probably not even close, but they could do what he needed them to do. Besides, his understanding of the process came from the side of the body, not the side of the technology, so it was probably better that way. “All right, this is going to hurt, and we don’t have time to be gentle. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” With that, he activated the cellular destabilizer to start breaking down the newly formed bone fusing his leg together. It would take a minute, which was about what he needed to program the nanites. He gave them a simple program, digitally restructuring the bone fragments into the form that better fit and uploading them to half of the nanites. The rest, he programmed to seek out foreign tech in Tony’s body, which he knew would be the inactive extremis. He couldn’t hope to remove it (even if it was his place to do so), but he might be able to give it a jump start, and the extremis’s healing factor might make a big difference. “Here you go. Things are about to get weird,” he said, pressing the injector to Tony’s hip and injecting the nanites.
@starkly

Tony had expected the usual haughty disdain for everything he seemed to say or do when he admitted to Justin that he'd been back on the bottle. The concern and disbelief--as if he'd really believed in Tony, thought Tony was stronger than that--might have been worse.

Be careful. Tony looked away, not wanting his expression to betray too much. He knew, with every fiber of his body, how hard it was to stay away. "Turns out I don't handle downtime very well," he said in a half-explanation that couldn't possibly come close to telling Justin just how quickly he'd spiraled once the fate of the SHRA and the superhero community had no longer rested so squarely on his shoulders. As much as he'd despised being Director of SHIELD, it had always been clear that he couldn't afford to slip. At the Hub, with time stopped and nothing to distract him from the grief and the guilt but his tinkering and a man who looked exactly like Steve... he'd slipped, end then some. None of that mattered to Justin, though, so Tony just wanted the offer of help with a nod and a short and mostly-genuine, "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind." That he intentionally hadn't gone to Justin when he'd really needed someone, well. There was no point in bringing that up.

At least the return to the state of his leg brought back all the knowing disappointment Tony had been expecting.

The cellular destabilizer any fire through his shin he squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his jaw and grasping at the edge of the exam table as it took hold. He let out a strangled grunt before he could force himself to breathe past the pain. He was fine. This was necessary. He'd had worse. He was fine. As strangely pleasant as Justin was being to him he wasn't about to let the other man see him whimpering.

He managed to open his eyes and focus after a minute and immediately frowned at what Justin was doing on the screen. Nanites? He'd trust Justin with just about anything medical--no matter what disagreements they'd had that had always been true--but not with nanotech. At least not with nanotech the doctor must have outsourced and couldn't possibly fully understand, especially given that much of Tony's Extremis-enhanced biology was in itself a form of nanotech, and even Tony himself didn't know how badly damaged Extremis was aside from the fact that he couldn't even use it to check the weather without getting a pounding headache.

"What are you--" he started, then Justin was jabbing him with it with no explanation but a quip about weirdness. All of a suddenly he was breathless and oh god oh god oh god Extremis was trying to fire up but the corrupted code was giving him error after error after error and his head was going to explode and he was only distantly aware he'd cried out in pain, grabbing at his head, and started to roll right off the exam table.

Justin hadn’t known what would happen, that much he had to admit (to himself). He’d been assured that the nanites could interface with any system, and had been banking on that being correct. No one was infallible, of course, but if anyone’s “any system” could be said to extend to Tony’s, he would have put money on T’Challa’s little sister. Worst case, he figured, was that it didn’t work.

Wow, was he wrong.

It only took him a few seconds to shut down the nanites that were trying to restart the Extremis, but he was sure it felt like much longer than that to Tony. Meanwhile, Tony was thrashing about, which was bad, but with no assistant, Justin could only do one thing at a time. He dove for the bed as the restart code was cycled through a few thousand tiny robots, grabbing Tony as he tipped over the edge, grunting at the strain in his muscles as he forced him back onto the bed, holding him there until the restart code finally took effect and everything was suddenly, blessedly still.

With him hugging onto Tony, of course. Well, now, this wasn’t awkward at all.

“Sorry,” he said, scowling at his failure as he stood up again, trying to maintain his composure, making sure that the work on Tony’s leg was still ongoing and hadn’t been fouled up. “That… it’s proprietary Wakandan tech, and it was supposed to be able to interface anything. Which… is probably true on that Wakanda’s world, but your tech must be too much for it.” Or maybe it was just user error, who knew. He wasn’t going to go down that road just yet. “I thought that if I could get it interfaced with the Extremis, it might get you back in fighting shape sooner than you needed, I didn’t expect… that. I mean, this is something you made.” Which was about as close to praise as Justin had given to a Stark in recent memory, and it was true beside. How long had it been since he’d seen a piece of Stark tech not be able to be forced back into working order? He literally couldn’t remember. “So… I’m sorry. I won’t even go near that again.” He picked up the control module for the nanites, frowned down at the display, then grabbed it and threw it up into the holo-display hovering over Tony’s bed. “This is the code it got when it was trying to interface, though. If you can see what went wrong, maybe you can make it work?” Meanwhile, he’d have to come up with another way for Tony to be able to survive whatever was coming, a solution that evidently didn’t include being fully healed.
@starkly

For what felt like a very long time the only thing Tony was aware of was the agony of thousands of Extremis noses all trying to come online at once and all of them--for lack of a better word--short circuiting in his brain. He was screaming, probably, even as he tried desperately to marshal his attention enough to shut down each malfunctioning connection.

The programming in the nanites must have been reversible, at least. Tony groaned as Extremis shut down again, and the pain receded much slower than it had come. It took another second for awareness to filter back and then...oh, great, Justin was holding him to the exam table in a bear hug.

He scooted back, about as embarrassed by that particular situation as Justin probably was, and said, "That was a really bad idea." At Justin's explanation, he amended, "I mean. Nanites in general? A fine idea. Sending nanites to activate a program that is housed in my literal brain and currently corrupted by magic," he paused just to let his thorough dislike for that state of affairs to come through, "without checking with me first, now that was a bad idea." He rubbed his forehead, the Extremis headache still receding. "I'm actually impressed the nanites were able to interface with the Extremis code at all, but that's Wakanda for you. The problem's that the magic corrupted my code so badly the only thing that's keeping it from destroying everything in my brain in a big fireball of agony is the deactivation failsafe that you just tried to override."

He sighed as Justin showed him the code. "I'll have to take a look at this later. It'll probably take some time, especially considering--" Maya was dead, and it was all his fault, "--I'm not actually the expert." He glanced down at how leg again. "Don't worry about it. I need you to get me back on my feet, both of them, for a few days. That's all. And if you can't, well, I'm going anyway. You know how it is. So,do your best and just try to avoid frying my brain this time."

Had it been a bad idea? Well, yeah, Justin couldn’t even argue with that one. Hell, he felt bad enough about this one that he didn’t even throw out some little jab that it looked like you didn’t need to be a hyper-genius to screw up and hurt people. “Well, when you put it like that, yeah, it does sound like a bad idea,” he muttered. He accessed the nanites again, reassigning them to go about the bone-restructuring work with the other half of the batch. “All right. I can get you in… mostly working order. You’re going to need to not take any direct hits to your leg, because it’s going to be easier to break than ever. The forcefields will help with everything from even heavy use, but taking a blow? Forget it. So try to not get up close and personal with anything that hits like a truck.”

And, of course, to keep from doing that, Tony would have to let someone else take on the thing that hit like a truck, which Justin was pretty sure he wouldn’t do, so… Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it. Justin stopped, his eyes on the medical readout, gritting his teeth for a second as he steeled himself to ask the question that he knew he needed to, that every superhero instinct told him to, that he knew he would have asked in a second before the Registration act, before everything had gone to hell. “Do… you need… more help with this mission?” he asked, sighing slightly as he did.
@starkly

Tony shrugged at Justin's obvious contriteness. Now that he was getting his breath back, it was hard to even stay annoyed. Justin hadn't caused any real damage. Probably.

Tony's mouth curled upward slightly as Justin explained the situation. Mostly working order was fine, better than he'd expected even, and "heavy use" had to include his usual range of maneuvers in the suit. "I'll try," he promised, not bothering to aim for anything like sincerity. He would TRY, of course--obviously it would be easier to save Safi if both his legs worked, but when it came down to it he knew and Justin knew that that he wasn't going to hang back if it came to a fight. Safi was depending on him. Chris was too.

... Apparently that had just occurred to Justin too. Tony tried not to look too taken aback, or touched, by the offer. Justin was an Avenger. Helping was par for the course.

On any normal day, turning him down might've been par for the course too. Tony, as a general rule, preffered handling his problems on his own. But this wasn't so much his problem as it was Safi's life, and he'd promised Chris he'd do whatever it took. Even if that meant swallowing his pride and asking for help from a man who rather publicly hated his guts.

"Honestly? Yes." Tony let out a sigh of his own. "I could use your help."

And there it was. He needed his help, and Justin was feeling relieved that he was asking for it, that he’d get a chance to look out for the guy. It came to him again that just before coming to the Hub, the final fight over New York had been the Asgardian-empowered horrors named the Worthy against Avengers that Tony had made Asgardian-enhanced weapons for, and that despite everything that had happened, Justin was one of the ones he’d thought of and chosen for that elite team to back up Steve. Now, here was Justin thinking about how close he’d have to stick to make sure got close enough to cause any real damage to Tony’s leg, while at the same time not being able to be at all sure that the guy deserved anything close to that kind of loyalty.

Damn it. Damn it!

“Just… Just tell me one thing,” Justin said, bracing his arms against his desk, his back turned for the moment from Tony. “Did you ever think that maybe you’d screwed up. Did you ever stop and think that you’d done the wrong thing, that maybe the intention was good, but everything about that whole Registration mess had all of you skipping right down the road to Hell? Just… even for a fucking second? Did you? It’s been a few years since then when I got pulled here, but I still haven’t actually talked to you since then, so… I might as well just ask the man when everything’s fresh. Do you still think that all of it, the… fucking prison, your mind-controlled villains, that damn clone of Thor… Are you still convinced that you are just totally righteous in everything you did? Just yes or no, that’s all I need, you don’t have to defend a damn thing. Just yes or no.”